Articles
Don't Do "The Twist"
“DON’T DO ‘THE TWIST!’”
Many of us in the congregation are old enough to remember when the singer, Chubby Checkers, came out with a song called “The Twist.” Instantly, a new dance craze was started with teens everywhere moving and twisting their bodies in different directions. At the time, the dance was considered quite appalling to the older generation. However, compared to today’s so-called dances, it seems quite mild. Twisting, turning, and contorting one’s body into all kinds of positions is sometimes extremely disgusting.
So, what does “twisting” have to do with the Word of God? Peter, near the end of his second letter, encouraged the brethren to grow in knowledge in order to stand against false teachers and doctrines that would damage the church. Peter warned in 2 Peter 3:16 that “as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which some things are hard to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures.” The word “twist” means something that is distorted, warped, or turned in different directions. It is disgusting to think that some would distort God’s Word from its intended purpose, message, or meaning. Peter says that those who are “untaught” (ignorant or not properly taught) and those who are “unstable” (not steadfast or not properly set) twist the scriptures to their own destruction.
Peter warns all of us about “twisting the Scriptures.” Let us not be guilty of “twisting” God’s Word to say what we want it to say. Also, let us teach others God’s truth so that they may not be guilty of “twisting” God’s Word to their own destruction. While the dance craze, “The Twist,” seems to have gone the way of all fads by slowly disappearing from the culture, the “twisting” of God’s Scriptures has been around forever.
